


Soul Stitches

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: A dog dies, Alternate Universe, Apocalyptic Fairy Tale, Dark, M/M, Magic, Post-Apocalypse, Sherlock Being Creepy, Sort of happy ending, fairy tale, mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-03 04:06:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13333146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: In the ruins of the old city, there is a man-who-was-once-human and he will grant any wish… for a price. John goes to ask him for rain. In exchange, he will give up his life. (Or not.)





	1. Who in the Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelblack3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelblack3/gifts).



> This was supposed to be a oneshot. Look at me now. Funny thing, I've been picking at this since 2012 and finally got inspiration in 2017. I have one more chapter to go =D As always, Angelblack inspires me to do better.

Long ago, Grandma Rose used to tell him, people flew in flying machines made of metal and men walked on the moon. Long ago, humans were the ones who made animals glow by changing the written laws of their genetic code. Humans could talk with other humans on the other side of oceans and they used to eat whatever they wanted from large marketplaces. ‘There were billions of us, John,’ she told him, as if human beings could be gathered together as one entity, one hive mind doomed to make the same mistakes.

Now, John looks at the ruins of cement and steel sticking out of the dried ground. He looks at the horizon of grey and cracked dirt. People starved out the earth until the earth decided to starve them in return, going into a deep sleep to escape them. They live on a sleeping corpse and John doubts that any humans will be alive to see the earth awake in so-called green again.

Wind sweeps another brush of dust against his cheek and John shivers, burrowing further into his fuzzy blue scarf.

He walks on.

Past the things that used to be called towers, man-made shelters eaten away by the hungry dust and wind. He tries to imagine the sharp lines and features that his grandma insisted used to be there, to imagine a clock, a circular device that haunted masses by measuring out every heartbeat of time. He can’t. Not really. Grandma had faded things called photographs that captured the images of the past but John still sees them as dreams. He wonders if the past London could be called Wonderland for him, as bizarre a world for him as it was for Alice.

Even if he can’t picture hordes of people squished together and buzzing back and forth as they squelched and lived with each other, he can read about them. Make up words and pretend he can picture those words. As if telling enough stories, listing enough sweet descriptions will bring the very place to life.

But no. They’re just words. Just sound in air and someday, John doesn’t think anyone will understand these words.

Grandma is dead now. When John is gone, who will tell her stories?

Harry won’t. Neither will his parents. They live on in the village. Reality. Working to get food. They call John a fool for wandering off to outsider villages, for exploring fallen cities and camping out on old roads. …At least, they used to call him a fool.

Now they can’t look at him.

( _Deserter._ )

( _Why did you come back? Why did you bother?_ )

“God knows why,” John tightens the grip on his cane. The only sounds are he can hear are his limping steps, his cane and the wind. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine that he’s the only human being left in the world. He can pretend his village doesn’t exist.

He could leave now, if he wanted. Keep exploring, keep searching but—

No. There’s nothing else out there. Nothing but dust and more of the dying earth’s skin. He can’t leave them. He can’t. He’s the only one willing to take this chance, even if it’s a tall tale and he never finds _him_ in the first place. He has to try because, because, well… what else is he good for now?

( _They watch him. Wait for him to fall and grasp for his cane. Watch his hands shake as he attempts to stitch up the hunter’s daughter and treat her wounds. Whisper. Only Harry helps but her help is silent and bitter._ )

John looks up at the one building still intact in the fallen city, at the only one touched in that uncommon green. Bricks twisted in vines. Interlaid with clawing branches and buzzing with strange skittering creatures and their bulging eyes.

A tiny sign still there, hidden and nearly illegible under the creature with painted, glaring eyes on its wings. _221B Baker Street._

And John… well he stops and stares for a while, something about that sign tugging at his memory… but he’s come here for a reason. He shouldn’t waste time.

Slowly, John limps up the steps, keeps his back straight and knocks three times on the door.

He waits.

*

For as long as John can remember, his village has had stories about the man-who-was-no-longer-human who lived in the dead city. Even as Grandma Rose attempted to preserve her history with fairy tales and Alice and Peter Pan, this is the story that stays in his mind.

“Don’t go out of the village,” Mum told her children.

“Why not?” Harry demanded. “What if there’s more food out there? Other people?”

“There’s no one out there,” Mum snapped. “Not anymore.”

“…What do you mean?” Harry scowled. “How do you even know?”

John wanted to ask the same things. But back then, Harry always had a way of stealing the most rebellious words out of his mouth.

Mum frowned and told them to sit down.

“There might be,” she admitted it, “but most are gone. Most… go out to seek help from _him._ That thing.”

Harry and John glanced at each other, half in confusion, half in excited delight.

“Are you talking about the monster? The thing that lives in the dead city?” Harry straightened up. They’d heard snippets. Whispers.

“Yes. They say he used to be a man until he destroyed himself. Remade himself from other parts into something that the gods curse. Remade himself into something of a devil. He knows things. Things no man should know, things men forgot. How to fly. How to make machines that kill people. How to bring rain.”

“Amazing!” and it was John who said this, not Harry, this time. What kind of person was this not-human? How brilliant he must be!

“No,” his Mum snapped. “He hoards that knowledge for himself. Twists it within his lab. He will never give it freely. Anyone who goes to see him is never seen again.”

At this, Harry stiffened.

“…Why?”

Mum turned her head.

“He eats them.”

That week, the Watson siblings didn’t dare go outside, not even to gather scraps for the fire or collect stones to play with later. They were too busy dreaming of a man-who-was-no-longer-human chewing on their insides, sewing new blankets out of their skin.

*

No one answers. But that’s alright. John’s been expecting that.

“My name is John,” he says to the dark leafy shadows glaring back on the door. “I’ve been here before, I know. And I didn’t ask for anything. So I guess, that’s why you never showed up. Um, well, I’m sorry. But I didn’t come to see you this time. I’ve come because, well,” he shuffles to the side and doesn’t look away from the door, “I’ve come to ask you for something.”

 _Snap_ goes the wind behind him, slamming a piece of metal down onto the cracked earth and John nearly attacks the space behind him but stops when he sees nothing there. Just dust. Metal eaten by the earth. The dead city buried in rust and wretched layers of clay.

John swallows, wobbling a bit before he can stand properly again.

“Right. Well,” he continues, “not sure if you can hear me. Maybe I should try shouting but I don’t really want dust stuck in my throat so I guess I’ll go on and try again a bit later. I wanted to ask you… for, well, for rain.”

He waits. Listens.

The wind seems to purr and more dust tries to creep towards his lips, hidden by the scarf. Creeping like those eerie creatures that skittle among the vines.

“It’s for my family. We haven’t had rain in months and now my sister’s sick and I know you don’t care about that. I know you don’t really do this. Or you do. Only when you feel like it. And then you, well, I heard you eat the person who asks you for anything so that’s fine. I don’t mind that. Eat me. Take me apart and take my organs out. I don’t care, just, just… _please—_ ”

The leaves rustle. Like they will fly apart and attack his face, devour his skin from inside out. John stumbles back, puts his cane up, just in case, and then the little creatures are flying off of the door, skittering away and the door creaks open.

John opens his mouth, catches sight of something glistening in the shadows beyond the door before he hears a deep voice reply, “No. I won’t be taking that payment at all.”

*

Sometimes someone in the village would fall sick. Too sick. And no matter what anyone said, their relative, their mother or father, sister or brother, friend or lover, would venture out of the village towards the dead city. They would go to find the man-who-was-once-human. They would ask for a cure.

Days would pass. The sick villager would be on the edge of crossing over into the next life and finally, finally a package would appear on their step. A vial of medicine. And that person would be cured. ‘Praise the gods for this miracle!’ they would say… at least until the next day.

The next day they would receive a piece of their loved one back. Only a piece.

Eyeballs or a heart or a liver or a thumb. Hands or feet or the skin of their face. Eaten. Gone.

“They should have known better,” the villagers would whisper. “They shouldn’t have gone.”

*

John freezes. There’s something about that voice…

For the moment, there is only him and the eyes gleaming inside the building. Maybe this person isn’t even corporeal anymore. Maybe he’s shadows and even the vines and the building itself and that’s why no one comes back from asking the man-who-was-once-human for a boon. Shadows always seem to crave flesh.

He blinks slowly, shivering when he sees those eyes trail up and down his body. But then he realizes what the being has said.

“Wait. What? But… why?” John asks. “Don’t you eat the others?”

The door creaks open a little bit more but John still can’t see what the man-who-was-once-human looks like.

“Yes. But they were boring. Too loud. And I needed a few more subjects for my experiments after I was full.”

“Well then use me for your experiments,” John scowls. “I’m not afraid—”

“No, you’re not, are you?” the voice whispers and in that moment, John can only hear the flutter of hungry vulture wings. “You’ve never been afraid.”

John’s nails dig deeper into his cane. “You can take anything. Just tell me what you want.”

“Your leg…”

“Alright then. Um, you want to cut off my legs or…?”

“You’ve been injured.”

And John feels like throwing his cane at the door. “Well yes, that’s obvious. Thank you very much. It’s still eatable or are you picky about your food?”

“Did the friend you got shot protecting survive or are they dead? Perhaps they’re one of the villagers you wish to save with this _rain_? Not kind of them… to send you here, so injured… on your own.”

“That’s enough, Bill has a family—”

“And you,” the leaves rustle with the dust, “don’t?”

John laughs then, laughs into a cough with the hoarse wind. “Not anyone who would miss me.”

“Then I don’t accept.”

The vines seem to push the door closed and John leaps out, sticks his fingers in between the gap—

“Wait!”

He pushes it open, steps on just on the line that tucks the shadows into the innards of 221B Baker Street. “There must be something you want. Please, I’ll do anything.”

He can barely see the man-who-was-once-human’s eyes anymore. Only darkness flickering and twisting around the floating white orbs.

“…Your injury… wouldn’t you rather request for _that_ to be healed instead?”

“What…?” John stares down at his heavy foot, the cane that has latched itself to his side for the rest of his days. “No. No, not at all. We need rain; my sister, she—”

“It must irk you very much… being unable to travel as freely as you used to, having to rely on your _family_ for support. Don’t you wish you could run as you used to? Don’t you wish you could be a warrior again?”

“I…” John blinks, dazed at the strange quality that the voice has dipped into. “No. Not if it means there’s no rain—”

“What if I could give you both?”

The dust scratches at John’s throat.

“I’m sorry… what?”

The eyes seem to gleam brighter in the shadows.

“Both. I could give you rain and I could give you a better leg. How about it? I am feeling generous today… it has been far too long since—”

“No. No thank you,” John grips his cane.

And the door actually slams open, winged crawling creatures racing up and around John as he sees the shine of teeth.

“ _Are you refusing my boon?_ ”

John finally throws his cane up and points it at the man-who-was-once-human in wild gestures, “Are you done insulting _me?!_ Yes, I’m injured now and I’ve accepted it. I don’t need to be _fixed_ and I don’t need any help with that! I had my time with good legs and now I’ve got a limp and that’s the way it is. Fuck off! I came here for rain so that my family can live to see another day and I won’t leave until you let me pay for what I came here for!”

The scarf falls from John’s face, exposing his lips to the cold press of the dust and he expects the dust to cut raw red lines against his skin as always. But it doesn’t. Somehow the dust is different here. Even the wind seems to have lulled for a while. Watching the man-who-was-once-human.

The voice laughs. Deep baritone scattered in drops of shadowy mirth.

“I’ve heard enough. Come back tomorrow.”

John’s mouth falls open. He thinks he almost sees the outline of a face and teeth curved up in a sharp smile. He thinks of wolves and something that could eat them, instead.

“Consider _that_ the payment. You must come see me tomorrow.”

“But, I… it’s a day’s walk to my village! I won’t make it in time,” John’s head races.

“Then stay here. In the city. London would welcome you with open arms, dear _John_ …”

“And how would I know that you’ve kept your end of the bargain? That you’ve given them rain?” John puts his cane down, resisting the urge to bury his face back in the confines of his scarf. “Give me two days, I’ll return then, after I’ve seen the rain. I swear.”

It’s cold again but the voice still sounds amused. “Oh John. I do not lie like _they_ do. But if you insist… I suppose I shall send you on your way and you will return hence tomorrow…”

John wants to ask what the man-who-was-once-human means but before he can say anything, a hand grasps out from the shadows of 221B and grabs John’s cheek. John’s words abandon him as he stares at the mismatched patchwork of pale skin, covered with crisscrosses and lines and roads of threaded needlework. A hand—no, probably a _body_ —covered with other human’s skin, patched together over countless decades and years and John can’t look away, wants to lean in and see—

“Until tomorrow,” says the voice and John feels a pinch before the wind and the dust and all of the vines seem to thread all around him and squeeze until he’s sure that air will never venture into his body again and then—

John opens his eyes.

His family’s gaping faces greet him just outside their shelter.

When John turns around, 221B and the old city are no longer there. No patch-work hands. No vines grasping for his wrists, tightening around with crafty quivers. Only the sad and fragile looking roofs of his village and now…

Clouds darken. A rumble over their heads.

Rain.

*

When John was eight, he had a pet dog named Gladstone who he loved very much. ‘One of the last Labradors,’ Grandma Rose had said in excitement, distracting John from the wary eyes of his parents. ‘What a lovely companion for you!’ Harry didn’t like dogs at all, turning her nose when Gladstone ruined her bedding so John had Gladstone all to himself. His one and only friend in a world where there were no other children his age.

Gladstone was always there when John needed a cuddle or wanted to run around. Gladstone would drool on John in his sleep and John still adored him.

But having an extra mouth to feed made his parents bitter, even if Gladstone was useful for hunting. The year John turned thirteen, their village experienced their harshest winter yet. Game was scarce. At times they went through days without eating to try to conserve what food they had stored from autumn. But it wasn’t enough.

They ate Gladstone the next day. Dried and saved the meat.

When John found out, he wouldn’t stop throwing up. He had to get out. He didn’t care about survival or snow or hunger. He didn’t care about justification or the greater good or have-to-live, he just thought of Gladstone staring up at him with trusting eyes and he wanted to… to… He just had to leave.

He packed what little he had and he ran away.

Towards the dead city.

*

There is something haunting about this, the sky sobbing down upon them as if forced to give its tears.

John doesn’t know how long he spends, staring up at the sky and the dark grey hues, letting the water wash against his face. At some point, he feels something nudge at his shoulders and he blinks, looking but unable to comprehend before he remembers.

“…Mum.”

His mother is haggard now, her hands shaking.

“You came back. You… you brought rain.”

John doesn’t know what to say when she embraces him tightly. Is only vaguely aware of it, as if he’s floating outside of himself, watching a stranger with his face interact with the woman who refused to acknowledge him when he returned to the village injured.

“Thank the gods… thank the gods… you brought a miracle…!”

It’s not a miracle, John thinks. It was that man.

*

Somehow, John made it through the blizzard and set his eyes on the first ancient stop sign. It was no longer red and John could barely make out the letter ‘s’ but he remembered Grandma telling him that these signs were always octagons and so it was. Encased in gravel and ice, leaning against an old brick wall, as it peeked out of the hills of snow.

He wondered if that would be him, later tonight, if he didn’t find anywhere warm to sleep. He couldn’t remember how long he walked or even where. He only saw distant towering shapes that immediately made him feel tiny. Buildings. That’s what they were.

He was probably in the dead city.

John couldn’t help but laugh against his scarf.

He stumbled over unseen things buried in the white and couldn’t pay attention to where he was shuffling towards until he saw a strange colour. A rare one that he didn’t get to see except in Grandma Rose’s old photographs and some of the clothes that she found for him.

Green. Deep dark green.

Even amidst the persistent blur of the snow, John could see that colour as clear as the blue of his scarf and without thinking, he stumbled towards it. Closer and closer, the green seemed to become more vibrant.

Snow didn’t touch the green at all and when John was close enough so that he was a nose away from the colour, he could see that they were leaves. Real leaves. Not just the painted ones in books or antique photographs. Leaves wrapped around walls of a building untouched by snow.

If anything, the snow seemed to slide around the building, as if the building were trapped in a thing called a snow globe with all the snow blowing outwards.

“…Beautiful…” John breathed, his eyes drooping downwards.

He nearly reached out to touch one but stopped. Leaves. Vines. A building that seemed separate from the world. No, he couldn’t go near this. The-man-who-was-no-longer-human lived here. Everyone knew that.

John swallowed and stared up at the hidden windows, wondering if the man-who-was-no-longer-human was staring back at him.

“I…!” he shouted, “I just need a place to sleep. If it’s alright with you! I won’t disturb you or ask for any miracles. I’m just going to sleep here for a while. I promise I won’t touch the vines!”

The snow howled in his ears and John coughed violently as some hacked into his lungs. He blinked slowly, seeing nothing in the window.

But then—one moment, he felt snow all over him, was numb to the pain and the next… he couldn’t feel the snow around him anymore. He stared at it. There was still a blizzard. The storm seemed persistent in recapturing its little prisoner but was blocked by the same force that protected the building.

John gaped at the snow and turned towards the building, bowing his head down and shouting, “Thank you very much!”

He paused and thought he could _feel_ the building quiver somehow, maybe a gentle thrum in the ground, maybe just a slight feeling in the air. The way water ripples with the slightest touch.

He unwrapped his scarf, looking around the building until he found the glint of what must be the doorknob buried in more and more layers of leaves. Carefully he put the woolen scarf over the knob and said loudly, “This is a gift! You must be cold too, so you can have this. It’s my favourite scarf.”

Nothing happened. He thought, perhaps, he felt a hush as there was no movement. The wind was so muffled that it hardly seemed there at all, save for the blustering swirls of white and grey pressing against the invisible barrier that protected him and the building. Silence.

“…Good night,” John said, eyes drooping as he curled up on the snow before the door.

Something creaked open. Perhaps the door. Perhaps the wind again, escaping through the barrier. But John was too entrenched in dreams to care as that something brushed against his cheek.

The next day, John woke up in his village as if he had never left. The scarf was folded neatly on his lap, soft and clean with the scent of crawling leaves.

*

(Did you dream of me? Like I dreamed of you?)

*

Harry is still sick. Clara and Mum fret, trying to coax their girl into drinking warm broth but Harry doesn’t respond to him, looking up at the ceiling with delirious eyes.

“I have to go back,” John says to no one in particular. If he goes now, he’ll make it by sunset. “That was the payment. I’ll ask him to cure Harry. He’ll probably take other payment now…”

Mum and Clara don’t hear him. He doesn’t want them to. If they did, he’s afraid of what they might do… or might not do. Instead, he puts a kiss on Harry’s cheek and opens the door again. The dust that was swirling harshly around their home now seems to embrace him with soft brushes, pushing him towards the road.

“Goodbye,” he says.

But the wind and the dust drown him out and the water from the sky kisses his lips until he wonders if this is what ‘drowning’ feels like.

*

“Is the whole world like this?”

“Like what, John?”

“Dust and grim… starving.”

“Ah… of course not. Somewhere, out there… is green. I know it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Silence.

“Mum… what’s green?”

“Well it’s a colour…”

“I know that. I mean… what’s it like?”

She tells him a beautiful lie.

*

John wonders what pure oxygen tastes like. Grandma laughed at him, once, when he asked her. ‘Humans can’t live on pure oxygen alone,’ she told him, ‘it would kill them.’ Strange, how what kept you alive could kill you. Too much water and you drown. Too much oxygen and your brain can’t handle it. Too much. Too much.

Too much dust now for a world that sleeps and gives its leeching inhabitants ‘too little.’

The world is spinning. Or is that the torrents of murky grays and browns, trying to stab at his eyes, trying to rip him apart into little cells? He doesn’t know anymore. Sometimes he swears that the dust caresses him and whispers, ‘I will take care of you’ and _that_ , well, that terrifies him more than he can say. So terrified that he finds himself moving through the dust-clouds with more power than before.

He tries running. But that’s no good, he should know better. He was a traveler for the longest time, wasn’t he? Always wandering…

The cough comes out of nowhere. He can’t quite stop. Warm droplets splatter against his face as the wind batters him further and he… it’s just… itchiness… dust in this throat and pain clawing at his insides and he… he can’t be sick… please…

The ground tastes dry and bitter.

He sees the red trickle down, a puddle forming around him. He wants to laugh.

_Will this feed you, earth? Will you wake now?_

“Of course not, John,” someone answers above the sick whistling of the wind, “not you. _Never_ you. All you have to do is ask…”

John can barely see. Barely think. What…? What’s happening? This voice is so familiar. So dark yet… comforting as the scarf around his neck. He doesn’t know what it wants but he… _please just…_

“Yes John,” the voice says quickly. “Just ask. Ask and I can grant you any boon.”

“Please…” his lips are so dry, they are like ancient paper, crumpling at the touch, “…please save…my sister…”

There is a loud bang. But ‘bang’ isn’t enough to describe the god-damned noise that stretches out into the sky and seems to rumble down at John, as if the skies and the dust and the wind are all conspiring together and spilling out their rage towards John.

“ _No_ ,” the voice is saying, “no, no, _no_ , you’re not supposed to ask for her, don’t you dare, John Watson, you can’t ask for her, no—”

So much red seeping into the earth but still it won’t wake. _Ah,_ John wants to say, _I see why…_ Who would wake from such slumber when reality was nothing…

“… _John…_!”

…but dust?


	2. Stories in the Dust

Did you dream of me?

 _Did you dream of me like I—_ did you dream—did you—did—did—didyoudreamofmelikeidreamedofyou—?

(Once upon a time... there was a… was… there was…

Once upon a time, John remembers running. Shouts. A city lit up in lights even in the night. A woman in white, he danced with her and he loved her but not the way she needed but that was alright as long as he could pretend her eyes were blue and as long as… as…

Once upon a time, John remembers running. Shots. Pain. Red. And the earth welcoming her final victims before she decided to sleep for a very long time.)

Did you…

…Dream…?

*

He wakes up surrounded by piles of books, _real books_ , and spots a shadowed figure in the corner, with an old blue scarf covering its face.

John nearly hits his head against the headboard, scrambling to grab his cane and pointing it at the figure menacingly.

“Who are you? Where am I? What is this place?”

Something flutters behind him and John almost lashes out when he sees hundreds of those tiny creatures crawling up above the bed with their paper-thin wings. They flit about, crawling over top of each other and around, like they want to gnaw the ceiling down to nothing and fly up into the dust.

“You nearly died out there, John,” the figure speaks.

The man-who-was-once-human. This is his dwelling. Suddenly, the hordes of tiny creatures, the mountains of old books collecting grey dust, and the leafy, vined walls make sense.

John doesn’t dare breathe.

“You’re very lucky I found you in the dust,” or very unlucky. John doesn’t know if the man-who-was-once-human will peel his skin off right away or prolong the torture. The way the vines in the room shiver when the man-who-was-once-human steps forward makes John want to throw his cane at him. “If I hadn’t, who knows what would have happened to your soul?”

“Well… thank you,” John says warily, because Grandma Rose raised him polite. Also, angering a being that will kill him at any instance doesn’t seem wise.

The-man-who-was-once-human stands up suddenly and sets a tray down on John’s lap. “Eat.”

For a minute, John wonders if the-man-who-was-once-human is speaking another language. But then he looks down and sees fruit ( _real_ fruit) in colours of red and orange. Soup that smells delicious (though John hopes that there’s no meat in it, he wouldn’t want to accidentally eat a human) and some fluffy stuff. Bread, he thinks.

“It’s not poisoned,” the-man-who-was-once-human snaps, “there’s no point in that.”

John frowns. “Right. I suppose you prefer to kill your guests using knives or something?” Oh damn. Not good. Not to mention, rude. Grandma Rose would call him ten kinds of stupid right now for riling up this… figure.

But the-man-who-was-once-human barks instead, in sharp laughter, so loud that the tiny creatures up above scatter around the room until they find new perches on the books and John’s sleeves. John almost swats them away but they just… sit there. Harmless.

“ _Perhaps_ ,” the-man-who-was-once-human lifts a gloved hand in the air. One of the winged creatures sits on top of his finger. “But not you.”

The shadows seem to shiver in delight and John’s throat clogs, like all the dust in the room has decided to settle a nest there.

“…Really.” John swallows, wishing he had a weapon of some sort for support. All the tiny creatures crawl up his sleeves. Feeding. Tasting. Staying. “Can’t imagine why…” and then, because John’s always run towards danger like a stupid idiot, “does the quality of skin or organs differ per human being?”

A flash of teeth like the glint of a knife in the dark is all John can see of the man-who-was-once-human’s face before the worn scarf covers it again.

“One would think so, but humanity tends to blend together even in personality. Their flesh, too, nearly always tastes the same. A bland flavour. Like spider webs to me now.”

John almost coughs up the fruit in his mouth, the juicy flavour too sickeningly sweet to consume. “Uh… right.” He sets the bowl down and refuses to touch it. Tries not to imagine it drowning in spider’s silk. “I’m sure that’s… very…” _sad, horrifying, disgusting,_ “…boring.”

Wings flap over John’s face, with little legs like the stuff of nightmares wiggling about his eyes. John yelps backwards, the swarm of tiny creatures following.

“…Always so compassionate,” the man-who-was-once-human seems to mock him, “it’s a wonder that the hungry world didn’t eat it up. Ah,” the creatures flutter about, “That’s why I like you John.”

The tiny creatures are practically plastered to his face. John wonders if they want to feed on him.

“Well.” John thinks of human limbs being sent home to villagers, scraps and leftovers. He thinks of dried up limbs and people digging in the earth for water. “I don’t think I like you very much, I’m afraid. Sorry.”

All of the tiny creatures seem to pause at once in midflight.

“…What a shame,” the shadows twitch, “We do have a new deal, after all. In exchange for staying with me, your sister will become the picture of good health.”

John yanks the shadows back, ignores the way they twist tenderly against his thumb. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take the deal.”

A glint of half-sewn teeth, like a jagged knife in the dark.

“Then,” the man-who-was-once-human’s voice threads into John’s breath, “till _death,_ ” his gloved hands sink into John’s arm, “do us _part,_ ” the last syllable treads scars against John’s lips.

John coughs out dust and blood when he pushes the man-who-was-once-human to the floor.

The shadows only scutter above and around him, laughing.

“Worry not, dear John, you will learn to love it here, like you always did.”

The tray hits the shut door, as if the man-who-was-once-human was never there at all. Nothing but the sickening scent of overripe fruit sinking into the walls.

*

John dreams of a man made of stitches, clawing at a mirror, while John can only watch. He can’t move at all, tied down to a bed, while the man made of stitches claws so deeply against the glass that the man’s finger smudges become scarlet streaks.

So he screams. Him. And the man made of stitches. John. Both of them. They scream at the figure dancing just beyond the glass, on the other side of the mirror.

The figure with John’s face.

*

“Let me tell you a story,” the man-who-was-once-human begins.

“Do I have a choice?” John asks drily, as the little creatures (moths, apparently) flutter into his sleeves.

“Not unless you’d like to see your village dried up again,” comes the pleasant reply, like a soft caress from the darkness.

John’s fingers dig holes in his blanket.

“Then, by all means, tell me a story. Does it have murder in it? Is it about the people you’ve killed?” Stupid. Stupid, stupid John, and his stupid mouth. Why does he have to _do_ that?

The laughter from the dark shouldn’t make him think of Grandma’s stories about gunfire and wars. It shouldn’t make him think of the sharp way the dust storms chase at his heels.

“All good stories begin with a murder,” and before John can retort, before John can think of the absurdity of being held prisoner to hear _stories_ , the man-who-was-once-human weaves a tale about London hundreds of years ago, bustling with people and cars and something called texting. The man-who-was-once-human talks about a consulting detective and a former military doctor rushing about to find a serial killer. His voice sews together each sentence with such intensity, that John wonders if there’s a dust storm brewing in the air around them.

“A study in pink,” the man-who-was-once-human laughs at the end of his tale, then pauses when John doesn’t join in. “Do you remember?”

“…I think you’re mad,” John admits, because he’s never heard such things in terrible but beautiful detail before, as if the words were painting a picture in his head, “brilliant, but mad. That is a _terrible_ title. Who would remember that?”

The shadows still, every little creature stops scuttering, and for a moment, all John can hear is a deep and emptying breath.

“Another story then, until you remember.”

John falls asleep to the tale of a disappointing reunion after the detective fakes his death.

*

In his dreams, the former military doctor gets tired of waiting for the detective (tired of grieving) and he moves on, marries a woman who dresses like a civilian but lies like a killer. The former doctor is happy, content even, and his life with the detective starts to feel like a horrible dream…

Until the detective comes back.

The former doctor gets angry, so angry, because it’s hard to know what to do with all these emotions, all these little intangible things…

His heart has had thorns growing in them for a long time.

He lashes out at the detective. He clings tightly to his wife, as suffocating as the vines digging into his soul, eating at his kindness.

And as the detective’s heart slowly breaks, vines and insidious roots digging deep into his body, the doctor never notices.

(Or, John thinks of the figure dancing in the mirror, maybe he did but didn’t want to cry anymore.)

*

Every night (not that John can tell, being boarded up in this dark place), the man-who-was-once-human regurgitates the same stories to him. The detective and the doctor meeting. The detective and the doctor separated. The detective and the doctor reunited but broken. The detective and the doctor falling apart.

Again and again and again. John’s so tired of these same old stories. Tired of listening to the doctor push the detective away, tired of the detective not realizing how much of a berk he can be when he thinks of himself. Tired of both these characters being selfish arseholes.

“When’s the ending?” John interrupts after the twentieth rehashing of the time the detective tried to save the doctor’s wife. If he has to hear about the how the doctor yelled at the detective and blamed him before they hugged it out again, he’ll tear his ears off. Stories should rejuvenate the mind, not leave it lying numb with the taste of dust in its thoughts.

The-man-who-was-once-human bristles, the edges of his body flaring up like inky tendrils eating up light.

“You love it when I tell you about my cases.”

“No, I don’t,” John snaps, “You don’t know _anything_ about me.”

That rasping laugh, creeping like the sound of the moth’s wings. “I know _everything_ about you, dear John. I waited for you for so long…”

A shadow reaches out for his arm and John growls, “Stop that!”, before whacking them away with his cane. Every moth in the room freezes in midair. Even the dust outside quiets.

The quiet is as insidious as the creeping vines that seem to crawl into every nook and cranny of this place. The quiet tries to smoother his own.

 _No_ , John thinks, remembering the villagers staring at his limp and dust storms that dug into his throat during his travels, trying to take his voice. _He will not be silent._

“You can’t keep putting your mouth on me like that,” he hisses, remembering nothing but sharp teeth and tongue probing, digging, like knives trying to dissect him.

That glint of teeth again.

“Like I want to kiss you passionately?”

“Like you want to devour me,” John scowls, placing the cane firmly in front of him like a sword. “Literally.”

A sigh. “I thought we discussed this already, dear John. I would never _devour_ you, not like those other fleshy humans. You are too precious for that. I would _treasure_ you. I _am_.”

“I don’t want to be treasured. I want to be,” _respected, free, away from you,_ “…trusted,” he decides to play the game. The man-who-was-once-human clearly has a fixation on him, one that (might) guarantee that John won’t be physically harmed. If he can build trust between them, he might be able to get away…

(But what about Harry and Clara? What if this monster hurts them?)

John doesn’t grip his cane tighter. No. He stands tall, staring the-man-who-was-once-human straight in the dark.

He might have to kill him.

“…Oh,” comes the soft, breathy reply. “ _John_ ,” his name has never sounded so tender before. “Of course, I trust you.”

“Then respect my ‘no.’” He tries not to listen to his heart pounding in his head. “And let me make the first move when I’m ready,” he adds, hoping that he’s reading the mood correctly.

The monster makes another pleased noise, low and guttural, the sound of need.

“ _Anything_ for you, dear John.” The shadows move close enough, a breath away from John’s wrist, before fading back away. “I will give you time.”

John doesn’t smile but he doesn’t frown either. He waits patiently for the man-who-was-once-human to finish the story, the awful and tedious story, before letting out a breath.

Yes, John thinks of rain and dust and the green hidden from the world, he might have to kill him after all.

*

“Grandma, can you tell me a happy story tonight?” John used to ask.

She would stop and pause in her sewing, before starting up again. “Alright. But only after two sad ones.”

“Urgh, nooo. I don’t want another sad story. They make me cry!”

“That’s the point, dear,” she would stroke his head. “If you didn’t have sad stories, how would you appreciate the happy ones?”

“But I already have sad things!”

The villagers were still mourning the loss of the medicine woman’s son. His head was returned to her doorstep when he went to bargain with the man-who-was-once-human. John will never forget that. He and Harry huddle together when they hear Mum screaming at Dad for leaving them again, and he knows what the healers have whispered about Grandma Rose. He doesn’t need to hear about sad things to learn how to be good. He already _knows_.

It’s just easier to pretend he doesn’t. It’s easier to dream of walking out of this village, straight into the dusty plains, and never coming back until he finds a better place for them. A place with green and water and the real sun.

(There’s a reason children call him crazy, for daydreaming instead of contributing to his mum’s work by helping with the hunt.)

Grandma Rose’s needles slip from her fingers, clunking down in tangled threads. The lines on her face deepen as she whispers, “Yes… I suppose you have had enough of sad things, especially about the Old World. Then… what kind of happy story would you like?”

John wants to hear them all.

*

“How about I tell you a story instead?” John interrupts before the man-who-was-once-human can launch into another retelling of the time the detective pretended to die. Personally, John thinks the narrative would end best with the detective’s fake funeral. The story had been half-interesting until the detective and the doctor had that messed up reunion.

Pause. “What kind of story could you possibly tell that I wouldn’t already know?”

John scowls. “First of all— _rude_. Second, how do you expect me to feel more comfortable around you if you never let me give any input to our conversations?! Third, don’t be an arrogant berk and just _assume_ you know everything about me.”

The pause that comes this time feels like the final breath before being swept in a dust storm. “You threw yourself in the line of fire to save a man who doesn’t deserve your time—”

“Don’t say that about Bill—”

“And you’ve been travelling around the continent for approximately a decade. You have a healer’s experience, steady hands, you’ve worked with needles before. You’ve a martyr complex, but that’s obvious from this Bill person and the sacrifice you’ve made for your sister… You care very much for your village though they care little for you. You’re John Watson. Kind. Loyal. Brave. _Fierce._ What more do I need to know?”

A chill settles in John’s stomach, colder than the nights he used to spend camping in the desert turned streets. “So you’ve the ability to read minds, big deal—”

“It’s _deduction_ ,” the man-who-was-once-human snaps.

John snorts. “What? Like the detective in your story?”

“The dust-burns on your skin, right around your eyes, reveals how long you’ve travelled out into the dustlands, away from your village. From the discoloration alone, I can estimate that you travelled for ten years without seeking long-term shelter. The calluses on your fingers suggest experience with needles, tools. The way you react whenever I threaten your sister’s safety betrays your very character and the way you walk… that limp isn’t one that you were born with. The way your ligaments twitch tells me that you were injured. As for how I knew it was a gun? Well…” Another glint of teeth. “I do admit that I can smell, practically _taste_ , old wounds like those.”

John suppresses the urge to shiver at those words, feeling as though he’s trudged through a cesspool of rotting organs, trying not to drown…

“Am I supposed to be impressed by how brilliant that is?” John doesn’t twitch. He can admit when an enemy is smarter than him, admire it even. But he’s not stupid. He knows his stories. And if the-man-who-was-once-human is telling him stories about a detective and then trying to _play_ that role, then he obviously wants John to play the role of the doctor. He refuses to be that doctor.

The obvious preening that John can feel radiating from the-man-who-was-once-human does not help. “You always were.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint, but I’m not. Do you really think that just because you can ‘deduce’ a few superficial details about me that you actually _know_ me? What a joke.”

Dark shadows begin to twist, the vines in the room shake so harshly that the moths all fly off in confused clouds above them. “I know you,” the-man-who-was-once-human proclaims loudly, “I _know_ you, John Watson, you are—”

“Not the kind of man who can stay silent for days on end, entertained by the _same_ stories you tell. Do you know about my grandmother? About any of the adventures I had out there? The people I met? My dreams or wants? No! You don’t! Don’t you dare think that just because you can figure out a few surface details about me that you can actually know me! People are made up of so many wonderful and terrible experiences that can’t be summed up in a few first impressions!”

A hush falls them all. Each moth pauses in mid-flight, waiting.

“…I don’t understand,” the irritated answer startles a few dust particles into moth wings. “What do you want?”

John resists the urge to yell. This man-who-was-once-human can’t take a hint. Then again, a being so isolated from the remains of human society… how could it understand social cues? The story that body language tells?

“I understand that you want a…” John’s nails dig into his cane, forming splinters, “ _relationship_ … with me but you must understand… A relationship needs to be reciprocal on both sides for conversation. You’ve shared such… interesting… stories with me, why don’t you let me have a turn?”

The man-who-was-once-human huffs, hands crossed so John can see every stitch in its skin. “I’m not interested in your stories.”

“Then you’re not interested in _me_ ,” John snaps.

The moths burst into the ceiling in agitated swarms. “I’ve done _everything_ for you—”

“Then _listen_ to me, _show_ me this by _listening_. That’s how relationships work! You listen and you adjust and you give and take. People are _made_ of stories. You kill a relationship once you stop listening for them! Do you even know the Doctor’s story in detail before he met the detective? What happened to him afterwards?”

A twitch. Good.

“…It didn’t matter…minor details…”

“Of course, it matters! It’s those details that make us fall in love with characters, that make them seem real,” John stops, trying to remind himself to stay on track. Don’t get caught up in arguments. Focus on the goal. “What makes your… feelings… become real.”

The moths settle back quietly on the ceiling as the man-who-was-once-human seethes in shadow.

“…Tell me a story then,” he says as a demand, an order.

John smiles, vicious and waiting.

“I didn’t always want to be a healer,” he begins.

The man-who-was-once-human’s teeth vanish in the dark. “That’s a lie.”

“No,” John’s smile widens. “Not at all. Did you think I was born wanting to heal? No, that’s hardly my drive for living. My sister is the one who gives her life to the healing arts.”

“The _drunk?_ ”

John scowls. “Harry is a fine healer, regardless of her coping mechanisms! Every day, she wakes early to make new potions and treat wounds. She’d drink herself to death from the self-appointed martyrdom she has if it weren’t for Mum and Clara. She’s brilliant! I wouldn’t have been a healer if not for her.”

The moths seem to settle in rows, an eager audience for his next words.

Slowly, the man-who-was-once-human seems to nod. “Tell me, then.”

*

In the Dustlands, people have learned have to build homes burrowed deep into the unforgiving earth, to siphon precious water from the earth’s guarded heart. Each village community is tightly knit, hoarded, protected. When the wells die, the village die. That’s why we wish for rain, so we can ration our precious well water. But ah, that’s another story for another time. The _point_ is that we’re protective—possessive—of our water, our safe haven.

We don’t let outsiders in.

But there are those who venture outside. Our hunters, looking for scarce meat. Our gatherers, looking for precious herbs that might have survived the dust. They are the bravest of us all. Those that wander with _purpose_. Those who wander without purpose… well… (cough) Another time. In our village, hunters and gatherers would return at dawn, when the sun begins to rise. We never let anyone in during the day. We close the path underground shut, abandon the surface homes and rush into the ones underneath. Hidden from Dust, from Ferals, from Sandmen, and monsters.

We thought an ancient sewer lid would be enough to block our entrance.

We were wrong.

One day, a burst of sand and dust blasted through the underground entrance, sending fiery dust lashing throughout our homes. It was a beast of sand and sun, of hunger for organic life, devouring our homes. The hunters rushed out with their weapons stabbing at air and burns on skin. They couldn’t move, they couldn’t win. They couldn’t breathe, no, they fell to the Sandman’s coarse and burning teeth.

The Sandman roared with each victim devoured, it would not stop. Its path was followed by dead soil and blood. Its path headed towards a lone, frozen boy trapped beneath a fallen table.

My mother rushed forward, ready to take water from the precious well and use it to douse the beast for good, but my sister jumped up instead, nothing but an herbal poultice in her hand. She screamed one name, one name alone. Clara.

Then she stabbed the poultice into the center of the Sandman’s whirling being, into the depths of the Sandman’s dusty, hungry heart, until her hand was nothing but dressed in peeled burns.

The little boy screamed and rushed towards her, but my mother would not let him.

The Sandman was spluttering and howling louder than any duststorm, its insides whirling out of its body and surrounding my sister in a small whirlwind. But she clung tighter, digging the poultice deeper, making her arms peeled back even further.

‘ _LeEettTTT gGooOo!’_ the Sandman howled and groaned, collapsed itself allover her.

“No,” she cried out, “I refuse! I know there’s a cure. _I know it!_ ”

The Sandman shuddered, the boy thought he saw tiny tear strikes of damp sand falling down and then—

It collapsed completely, sand falling all over the cave floor until there was only a woman left.

My sister Harry gathered this woman up in her arms, and she took this woman home to us. She glared at every person who dared argue against her.

You see, my sister was the village laughingstock, the healer apprentice who shouldn’t have been an apprentice. She told my parents constantly that the Sandmen, the ferals, the creatures wandering around in the dark were human once. She lived on Grandma Rose’s stories, she believed these creatures could be cured. And when she went to gather herbs on the surface, she met a dying woman named Clara. She fell in love. She tried to make a cure.

She was right.

And the little boy, watching all of this… that was me. That was me when I decided that I wanted to be a healer like her. Like my sister.

*

The moths flutter up, like curtains drawn up at dusk.

In the darkness, the man-who-was-once-human shifts back. “That was…”

“Incredible?” John smirks.

“…Adequate.”

John scowls. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t understand the point of this story. Why did that inspire you to become a healer? You didn’t describe the process in which your sister came to a cure. What ingredients did she use? What was her process?”

“If I was telling a story about medicine, sure, I might include those details. But that wasn’t the point of this story.”

He thinks he sees the man-who-was-once-human pouting. He hopes not. It’s a horrific sight. “I don’t see how you can be inspired to be a healer if you weren’t lured by the pursuit of intelligence.”

“It’s a story about doing the right thing when everything seems impossible, about finding tenderness in the most hopeless situations. About trying to save lives because you _care_. That’s why I wanted to be a healer.”

A scowl. “I still don’t see why you told me this story about your sister instead of one about yourself.”

John holds back the urge to sigh. Slowly, he says, “I am who I am because of the relationships I’ve formed. And… people like to tell stories about the ones they love. You can figure out a lot about them by listening to how they describe their loved ones.”

“…Oh.”

The silence that follows feels dangerous. Waiting. The silence that waits for a predator to pounce or choose other prey.

“You… are very different from the John Watson I know.”

John feels a shiver trailing its cool lips down his spine. “What did you…”

The man-who-was-once-human starts to pace, robes hitting random moths and making them spiral down. “My John would never speak so much of his sister. He hated her. Never mentioned a word about her… but you… you seem to pride yourself on her accomplishments. You don’t even appear impressed by my own—”

“Wait—”

“—and a John Watson who isn’t a healer first? Who didn’t know this since the day he was born?” The man-who-was-once-human suddenly whirls back around, sewn-up hands snatching John up by the cuff of his shirt and pulling so close that John can see every stitch on the man-who-was-once-human’s face.

That face, like a quilt of nightmares. That face, made of stitched up skin and bones and _pain_.

John can’t look away.

“Who _are_ you?!” That face splits apart like a hollow bag of dead skin. “ _What_ have you done to _my John? My_ doctor?!”

John shudders, trying to breathe away the scent of rotten meat and bones. “I don’t _know_ who your John is! I’m only _me_ , I’m the John Watson that _I_ know and if you’re gonna kill me for it, then do your damn job and _finish it!_ ”

That face flinches back. The grip on John drops him. The man-who-was-once-human shrinks back into the shadows. “John… John never looked at me like that before…” The face, the thing, the man-who-was-once-human stares up into his eyes. “You… really aren’t my John.”

His mouth is dry. He could die at any moment for telling this story. This truth. “I’m not him,” he says.

And the man-who-was-once-human lets out a howl, retreating back into the depths of the house. The howls stretch through the air, leaving scars in the scattering silence, in John’s chest.

He stands still, not daring to move, even when the moths rush to him for comfort.


	3. Green in the Dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update! I'm doing my last round of practice teaching, then it's graduation in June and I'm an official teacher! (Well, gotta find a job afterwards) Wish me luck!

“Why do you wander so far, in search of a fairy tale?” a stranger asked once, when John stumbled across her in the dust.

John didn’t know what to say at first. Not then. But, if he could answer now, he would say, “What else do I have to live for, but fairy tales?”

*

For days, the man-who-was-once-human does not return.

Food appears through the flap at the bottom of the door. Such sickening sweet food. Too much sugar, as if crying for apology to the stale bread and burnt soup. Too much tea, dripping from breakable cups, desperate for attention.

John’s knuckles are bruised and scabbed over from trying to dig open the rusted windows. Not that the windows can even be called windows. They’re smothered over by swarming vines that have hungrily taken up each bit of glass. No outside world. Only the sharp smell of mint and rotting berries. John refused to choke to death on sickening sweetness.

He’d try kicking the door down but his weak leg might crack under the pressure. Nothing in the room seems useful for escape. No heavy metal bars. No stones to throw. The bed is bolted down. Plates aren’t useful, even for digging. The plate shards only dig into his skin when he tries and he can’t afford to bleed now. The house, too, seems to breathe into him with each rustling vine, each creaking step.

John closes his eyes. “I’m fine…” His leg spasms under his fists. “I’m _fine_. I’m not dying here… I’m _not_ …”

Even the moths don’t move anymore.

*

The little mint plants have shriveled up, as if the sand has sucked each leaf’s essence dry, leaving soon to be dust. The stems crumple up as soon as John touches them and he scowls, digging harder into the rock. Predictably, the rock doesn’t budge. That was his last bit of passable not-quite-rock soil.

He throws his shovel down, ignoring how the clangs seem to echo off his head and the cave walls.

“Do you feel better now?” Grandma Rose asks patiently, the light of the sunstones making her glow. Sometimes John wonders if that’s what the real sun looks like—Grandma Rose’s sardonic smile, warm with wrinkles, in the golden glow of the dark.

“No.” He kicks the shovel pointlessly.

“Then channel your anger to something more productive. Things aren’t completely pointless. I’m sure _something_ survived in our little stone pit here.”

“It’ll probably taste disgusting.”

“Mint is stubborn,” she insists, crouching down to examine the leaf remains. “Aha!” She digs down into her patch of garden, “I found some!”

Yellowish-green leaves peek out from her hands.

“What?! Let me see!” John jumps over. Sure enough, he can smell the mint. Fresh and so different, so _foreign_ , from the smell of dust and stone. He thinks the world before all this dust must have smelled like this. “You must be magic, Granny,” he stares up at her in adoration.

Grandma Rose rolls her eyes. “Nonsense. This is the simple stuff. Not _real_ magic.”

But it is, John thinks. No one else can make things grow in the dark of the underground cave. No one else can make sunstones act like the sun to make things grow.

Only Grandma Rose.

*

The door leans open as John slumps forward in exhaustion, like a trusted friend snatching their hands away, letting him fall. He catches himself just before his face meets the floor and jumps up when he sees the hallway beyond the door. How strange. A hallway made of wooden walls instead of dark stone.

“…Should I go look?” he asks the moth perched on his shoulder.

The little thing’s wings flutter against his nose, each beat like blinking eyes. Judging him.

John shakes his head and grabs his cane. This could be his chance to gather clues. He doesn’t dare contemplate escape yet, not before he can kill the man-who-was-once-human. Without that death, John can’t guarantee his family’s lives. But _information_ , John can use that, surely. The more information he has, the better plans he can make in case of the worst…

The halls huddle down around John, more stifling than his home underground. John can’t quite see past a yellow-greenish haze. There are such deep roots guarding the walls jealously from harm. They could be like woody ribs intertwined with the flesh of the house. They could be like tangled bars, entrapping all green inside.

Slowly John comes across a different room. Strangely enough, he sees a strange light source softly glowing up above. A large glass dome with tiny lit-up creatures, like specks of dusty light, gathered against the surface. John almost wants to poke at the glass and set them free, but stops himself. It wouldn’t do for him to accidentally set this place on fire from his ignorance.

The light reaches down to the rest of the room, to tables stocked with stained and rusted glass tubes, to rotting pages overgrown with green tinge, to various strange plants growing all over the cracks and seams of this strange place.

John moves forward, only to stop at the sight of hundreds of winged creatures like his moth friends. The creatures once had colourful orange and yellow wings, inked with black patterns. These wings must have been vibrant in life but now look as fragile as pictures made of dust, ready to crumple at a single touch. The winged creatures litter the floor, piles and piles of them, the way he’s seen people try to tile the floors of their homes underground. Dead.

He closes his eyes, fights back the urge to vomit. By his cheek, his little moth friend scuttles closer.

Suddenly, something shuffles deep beyond the room of glass tubes and dead winged creatures. John grips his cane tighter, readying it in case he needs to attack when—

“You shouldn’t be out here,” the-man-who-was-once-human speaks from the shadows.

John lowers his cane only slightly. His legs ache from the weight of his body.

“Then you should have locked the door.”

No answer. The man-who-was-once-human moves back into the darkness. Waiting.

John breathes in and out. When the man-who-was-once-human doesn’t make a move, he lets his cane back down. “So…” John tests the air. “Is this what you do all day? Sit around. Stare into the distance?”

A scoff. “I don’t _sit_. I think. I _plan_.”

John snorts. “Right… well. I’m going to find some food.” If the man-who-was-once-human isn’t going to stop him, then he can brood all he wants. John will keep surviving.

When no movement comes from the far side of the room, John carefully tip-toes through the graveyard of dead winged creatures. His moth friend clings to his ear, as if letting go will condemn them to the same fate as their winged companions.

As he steps closer to the light, he can see all of the plants stretching out hungrily for nutrients. Such bright and vivid shades of green that John has never seen before in his own gardens, colours that he couldn’t even imagine that eye-catching.

Then his eyes light up.

“You grow _tomatoes?!_ ”

Another scoff. “Of course I do. Where else do you think your food comes from?”

“Well, you _are_ a terrible legend that’s basically immortal. I thought you magicked them up.”

“Magic was only contributed to sustain their growth and the maturity of the fruit. They’re perfectly natural otherwise,” comes the monotonous answer.

“That’s _amazing!_ No, _more_ than amazing! You even have kale! And are those cucumbers? Ah! Mint! I love mint,” John happily smells the leaves.

“You… think this is amazing.”

“Yes, yes, oh my god, are those flowers? That kind of flowers you just grow for the sake of growing?” John leans in to touch the soft red petals, twisted lovingly into a gorgeous bloom. “What are these called?”

“Roses,” the man-who-was-once-human says impatiently. “Now, about this _enthusiasm_ you—”

“ _Roses_ ,” John tries to memorize their colour and shape. Their thorns. “Just like my grandma.”

“…You truly think that this garden is ‘amazing.’ Even more so than stories of mystery and crime?”

John stops and stares over at the darkness. “Yes. Yes, it really is.”

The shadows twist and tremble. “ _Why_.”

“The world already has so many crimes, so much violence… too many unsolved bloody mysteries. But this? Being able to grow these living beings so they can flourish? So they can feed other people? Make people happy? That’s remarkable. You’ve done an incredible job with this garden.”

“…Oh.” The man-who-was-once-human sounds very small.

For a brief moment, John almost wants to comfort him. To step into the shadows and say, _what was your life like for you to have never stopped and appreciated the flowers_? But then the moment passes. John remembers that this being is a monster. John remembers that he must earn the man-who-was-once-human’s trust and escape from this place.

“I must think,” the man-who-was-once-human says abruptly and the shadows slink away, revealing more of the gorgeous garden.

John stares into the empty space, the plants, and ponders.

*

He’s a shoddy gardener. Compared to Grandma Rose, he might as well have poison hands because every plant he touches dies.

“Quit being so dramatic, John Hamish Watson, and get up. Try again.”

“ _Nooooo_ ,” John moans into his cot. “I’ll just end up ruining another batch of food.”

“This time, I’ll _watch_ you. How’s that?” Grandma Rose nudges him.

John ponders for a moment, then nods.

He and Grandma Rose trudge over to their dusty little garden and begin watering what they can.

“How come I can’t make them grow nice like you can, Granny?”

Grandma Rose sighs again and pinches his ear. “Stop getting so wound up in what you _can’t_ do and figure out what you _can_ do. Some people have a natural green thumb, like me. Others learn it. And there are some that don’t have the plant sense but can appreciate the green well enough. That’s you. And if there’s anything I know about my grandkids… it’s that they have a knack for people.”

John gasps. “You can _grow_ people?!” He has a horrific image of babies popping up from the soil of the dustlands and crawling around, waiting to be eaten.

Granny sighs once more. “No, silly heart. Not in the way you’re thinking. Not like plants do. But people do grow. You’re getting taller every day, learning new things, becoming someone different than the little John before. You’re a healer, John, just like your sister. Mark my words. You help people _grow_.”

John looks down at his hands, grimy with water and dirt, and can’t help but disagree.

*

For three more days, the man-who-was-once-human does not return to the garden. John tries not to worry about his captor and instead focuses on cataloguing and memorizing as many plants as possible. It’s difficult, considering John’s never seen most of these plants before, so he took out his journal from his meager sack of belongings (luckily found in a cupboard) and started sketching them instead.

He used to sketch so many things in his travels. People. Monsters. Strange dust cities. Healer’s notes. John wonders why he stopped.

His moth friend, now called Momo, settles in by his wrists with a slight tickling sensation as he sketches and plans.

John can’t do much about the man-who-was-once-human. He isn’t good at staying on script. If it weren’t for his impulsive mouth, he might have been able to establish more trust with the man-who-was-once-human sooner but now he’s back at square one because he refused to be that monster’s version of John Watson.

 _That’s_ something to think about. How long has this monster lived, waiting for a man with John’s face to return to the living? How much longer will this monster keep John alive if he won’t fit into his role?

He starts to laugh to himself. What does it matter? John’s never been good at following rules, following roles. He’ll just have to improvise what he can. If he dies, then he’ll die fighting.

“Tell me more about these plants. What stories do you have to say about them?”

“Holy shit!” John nearly topples over an innocently growing patch of squash. “ _Warn_ me next time you decide to appear out of nowhere!”

“…Why? We are the only two English-speaking beings in this dwelling, who else would you expect to appear from behind you? Now tell me about the plants.”

John _swears_ he sees the shadows smirking somehow. An impossibility, but John swears it.

His hands threaten to shake, but John grips them tightly over his journal’s pages, as if to smudge away his written thoughts.

A tendril of shadow, like fingers, pokes at the pages.

“…What’s this?” the man-who-was-once-human asks, in a hush.

John closes his eyes. _Let it grow_ , he tells himself.

“…Just trying to figure out what kind of teas I could make with rose petals. Got a bit distracted and started sketching the thorns.”

“…Things designed to hurt are often distracting.”

John stares at the hint of stitches in the dark. Thread and wire woven into dead human skin. Over and over, new patches of victims.

“…Yeah,” John looks back at the roses, “at least they have reason to.”

“Yes,” the man-who-was-once-human snatches the answer up as hungrily as a Sandman. “You understand that I’ve always had my reasons. Even if you aren’t my John, I had to take the chance that you might—”

The words twist and tremble, as if caught in a web. Words like spider legs waiting to dig into webby silk for the stillness of prey.

“Yes,” the word grinds down John’s throat. Spider legs digging, digging. “I’m sure you had your reasons… You… miss him. A lot.” John forces a smile, banishing all thoughts of swallowing spiderlike lies away.

“I do.” Mangled hands crease against John’s cheek, making him look up into eerie eyes. “I miss _you_.”

John shivers and he can feel—( _the greatest detective in the world jumps off the roof of St. Bart’s and his heart just rips, rips, rips, no, no, no, why didn’t you talk to me,_ Sherlock _, why, why—_ ), John can feel ( _punching a dead man in the face, rage, betrayal, why didn’t you_ tell _me?!_ )

Nothing.

The man-who-was-once-human leans in, Momo flutters frantically against John’s cheek, and John smiles against the kiss.

‘Liar,’ he hisses in breathy touches, no words. ‘you don’t miss me at all.’

*

‘I love you,’ Dad tells Mum when he holds her at night, when he comes home to her yelling and screaming, when he spends their funds on cheap bets, thrills, and booze.

She never says it back.

John though, he remembers drinking up those words whenever Dad would ruffle his hair. John didn’t understand why Harry walked out of the room when Dad tried to say hi, why Mum would make a complicated face but—

After the fourth time Dad left, taking their funds and food with him, John knew why.

‘I love you’ is the easiest lie.

*

“Tell me a story,” the man-who-was-once-human demands after breakfast. John groans from his spot by the garden. He and Momo don’t sleep with the moths in the bedroom anymore. Frankly, John hopes to never see that room again. Instead, he spends all his time with the plants, sleeping by rosebushes. He often wakes up with new scars from the thorns but he doesn’t mind. Anything to distract him from this new… routine.

Every morning, the man-who-was-once-human slinks forward from the shadows with food. Then the man-who-was-once-human watches John eat with peculiar intensity before asking for another story about John’s life. John’s told the man-who-was-once-human about finding different religious cults wandering the dustlands, about successful villages that have peaceful lives, about new creatures never documented before. He shares the songs and myths of different peoples, speculations about old relics from the old world. In these moments, John doesn’t have to pretend to smile, as he relives these old stories.

By the time John feels fatigue eating at his vision, the man-who-was-once-human offers another meal and they sit in silence. Sometimes John sketches. Or reaches out for the man-who-was-once-human’s hand, listening to the way the monster’s breath hitches. Small steps.

In these moments, sometimes, the man-who-was-once-human whispers, “My John was never in love with greenery like you are. My John was a soldier. Lost in his own anger. Memories.”

John never knows what to say to these statements. _I am not him_ , he could shout uselessly. But that’s not part of the plan. This monster has killed people. This monster wears human corpses for his skin. John must not fall for something so lonely.

But the man-who-was-once-human must know John’s true thoughts, because he’ll always laugh darkly and say, “You must hate me, new John, for being this way. But I had to do it, I had to devour those humans, you see, _how else could I see you again_?”

In those moments, John can see the monster’s face, tears shivering down stitches and stitches of dead skin. Just a twisted old man underneath. Mad with grief.

“You’ll stay with me, won’t you? You won’t leave. I can make you stay forever…”

John does not ask _why_ or _how_. No, John doesn’t care how monsters are made. John does not forgive.

But he takes the monster’s hand, kisses it softly, the way he wishes he could to a lover one day.

*

“Never let a single relationship define you,” Grandma Rose whispers. “Humanity is more than a single person.”

*

“Tell me a story,” the monster demands, curled up around John’s shoulders.

But John doesn’t answer. Just stares at the brown starting to eat at the green leaves beside him.

“ _John_.”

Even Momo looks wilted, wings drooped sadly against his finger.

“John _Watson_.”

“I don’t have one.”

The monster scowls, every broken part of his lips fanged apart like wolf’s teeth. “Not possible. You always have one. Tell me about your sister. Clara. Your adventures. Even your _dog_. You can’t have no stories left. It’s not possible.”

“Well, what do you _think,_ Sherlock?!” the name comes as a shock to John and the monster, so rarely used. Rarely acknowledged. That this monster was human. That this monster was the detective spun up in feeble tales. “Do you think I can pluck stories out of nowhere, breathe them life as you see fit? I have nothing left to tell, nothing that wouldn’t be old news, boring, _dull_. I have nothing left to give to you. Just throw me out as you have everyone else.”

“That would defeat the purpose of _keeping you here_.”

“I can’t tell you new stories when I’m not living anything new.”

The monster’s hold tightens. “But you are. You’re with _me_ now. Tell me a story about what you think of me.”

John’s laugh bites and tears at the silence while the monster’s shadow twists wildly around him. “You’re living it with me. Right now.” He gestures to the dried edges on the plants, rot and age eating the green. “Stagnation.”

“…No.” The monster rips himself away from John, scuttering across the floor of crinkled, dying leaves. Each crunch tells tales of decomposing bones, sleeping in the earth, burying it in dust. Each rustle feels like pockets of the afterlife’s hisses crossing from the void. “You… you’re _my_ John.”

Again, with that other John. That idolized void that this John has to fill. “I’m not—”

“You came back!” the monster whips around, blots of dust and darkness dampening the green. “You’re supposed to make me _better!_ I’m keeping you _ALIVE_ in this dusted world, aren’t I?!”

“…” John waits for the lashing shadows to retreat. To lessen into silence. “Breathing? Yes. But, _alive_?” He has to make this real. Make the lie breathable. “…I don’t want to end up like this,” he gestures to the dead leaves, to the dried-up skin in stitches, “if that’s what you mean by ‘alive.’”

There. Just the right amount of tenderness. Of stoic vulnerability.

The monster trembles. “I… would make the process more bearable for you, John. You could live forever with me but you wouldn’t need to recycle such dull humans for parts. I found something better. You’d keep your body, be preserved. Be a being higher than myself. Let me show you.”

The monster’s hand stretches out, each stitch like skeletal fingers exposed from skin.

 _People will still die if I choose you_ , John wants to say.

But he takes the monster’s hand anyways.

*

A memory: Grandma Rose’s old books. Withered yellowed pages. Crinkled, crumpled, under his touch. “These are what dying leaves feel like, John.” Between each page – the leftover pieces of pressed flowers, shriveled and flat. Pressed between time and dead words.

Beautiful. Gone.

*

The monster’s room, unsurprisingly, is dark. The kind of dark that creeps in during isolation and despair. The kind of dark John felt in the desert, bleeding out and alone, but without the comfort of death.

Stagnant again.

“Come closer,” the monster tugs him along, until their bodies touch.

John shivers at how cold the shadows feel. They feel different than the shadows in the rest of the house. Teeming, watching, _breathing…?_

The door shuts behind them and John tenses, cane ready to whack whatever comes at him—

Softly, a cool glow warms the air. When John squints, he sees the outline of two sleeping shapes, nestled in beautiful boxes of glass. The glow, even softer here, like light in love with sleep, makes the two bodies look ethereal. Otherworldly.

John nearly stops breathing when he realizes one of the bodies looks like him. A slightly older John Watson. Wearing old-world clothes and beside him is—

“…It’s you…”

John doesn’t know _how_ he knows it but he does! This pale man, with a face that could cut the stars and handsome curls, is the monster. Such beauty torn apart into a macabre tale…

“ _No_ ,” the monster spits out, “he’s who I was supposed to be born again as.”

“…Excuse me, _what?!_ ”

“Reincarnation,” the monster’s eyes are blinding with hungry excitement. “You’ve heard of it, I’m sure. The theory that souls are reborn when they die. Another cycle, another way the universe cycles itself over. I was supposed to die centuries ago, but I took myself out of the cycle and the here, you see, the cycle has tried to correct that mistake by creating another body for me… another soul…”

“Wait, wait,” John shakes his head. “Give me a moment… Just… _that doesn’t make sense_. If ‘reincarnation’ means recycling souls and _yours_ hasn’t died yet, then how can _he_ be your future reincarnation? And how can _he_ ,” John points at the other him, lying on a bed of white lilies, “be mine?!”

“Oh John, oh John, John, _John_. He’s not your reincarnation. He’s not even alive. He’s my first John, his corpse perfectly preserved…”

What. The. Fuck.

The monster smiles. “You’re his reincarnation. The one I’ve been waiting for.”

Slowly, John starts backing away. But the monster’s hold is tight…

“It was _my_ fault. He took a bullet for me. He died _smiling_ at me, the damned fool…” The monster starts bringing John closer, rubbing his thumb feverishly over John’s skin.

“The day he died, I tried _everything_ to bring him back… but human corpses stay viable for only so long… I had him stored and preserved. I had to find other corpses to continue my work but they kept failing… You can’t program life without a soul and I was just beginning to grasp the equations…! We’re like computers, you and I. All human beings. We need to preserve the software as well as the hardware—”

“I don’t understand—!” This madness about ‘computers’ and ‘hard/software’, like witchcraft babbled in secret…

“—but my own hardware was falling, this feeble body! I had to replace the failing parts with other humans so I could see him again, my John, when I would bring him back to life! I’d drain the whole world if I had to meet him again but then… I met _you_.”

John’s mind goes blank as the monster’s hands go up to caress his cheeks. Beside him, Momo flutters anxiously, as if trying to tug John away.

“ _You’re perfect_ ,” the monster whispers reverently.

Hell. No.

“I am _not_ your John, and I never _will be!_ ”

“But I don’t want you to be him anymore,” the monster’s nails dig into his skin. “Why would I, when you’re so much better?”

For a moment, John doesn’t breathe. Does he dare risk it?

“…I don’t believe you.”

“But you must!” The monster leans in, nose to nose. John can smell the dried-up flesh…! “True, I meant to keep you here until your soul settled into a bond of trust with me and then I would have taken it and put it into my first John but then I started to _know_ you… to know your differences… _crave them_ …”

The monster presses so close to John, he can barely remember where his body ends…

“My John never appreciated the flowers like you do, he never reveled in his flaws. Never embraced stories quite like you… You’re a marvel, a new and improved John… Better software for him…!”

John does _not_ like the sound of that. “And what about you? Are you just better software too?”

Immediately, the monster’s eyes narrow. “No,” his rank breath meets John’s lips, “I am the original. I’m _better_.”

John almost laughs. “Better? You?”

“ _I am_ ,” the monster whispers feverishly, an eerie light entering his eyes. “I’m the one who waited decades for you, I _dried up the earth_ for you, so I could see you again, John. Oh, don’t look at me like that! You know that I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have a _choice!_ ”

“A choice?!” John shouts. “If you’re really saying what I think you are, then you shouldn’t have made the bloody choice!”

“ _I had to do it so we could be together again!_ Eternity, the afterlife, what a statistical uncertainty! Why embrace the unknown, not knowing if I would see you again, when I could _guarantee_ I would after I confirmed the theory of reincarnation?!”

“So you really ended the world?” John steps back until his thighs hit the edge of the glass coffins harboring the other two bodies behind him. “No single person can do that. Grandma told me that there were multiple factors… war, disease, plague… We _poisoned_ the skies with smog.”

The monster shrugs, his smirk dangling dangerously from all his stitches. “True. Humanity would have brought about its end quite a ways later… I merely sped up the process.”

“ _Really_.”

“Do you ever hear the Dust, the Earth outside, speak to you, John? What does it whisper?”

“None of your business,” John snaps, remembering whispers of _hunger_ , a longing for _souls_ …

A chuckle. Those eyes, so close, they could steal his own. “I’ll tell you what it whispers to me. ‘ _Thief_ ,’ it screams at me, day in and day out. It’s missing a soul, _mine_. So much that it spat out this body,” the monster gestures to the other Sherlock lying among vibrant green vines, “as if to mock me for not joining the void.”

John glances down at the other Sherlock, the alien smooth skin, unmarred by stitches… the strange green veins glowing up at him beneath the vines. Wait. Green…?

“So the world can’t move on, until _you do_ ,” John murmurs, studying the other Sherlock’s veins. “It’s _starving_ us all… until you give in.”

“Isn’t the earth monstrous?”

 _No_ , John thinks, _you are._

“Why? For creating this new body for you?”

“Tch. _New body_. Reincarnated souls always have the same essence but not the same experiences… Look at you, John. So different from the original John, yet better. You don’t seek out death or danger like he does… but life. Beauty. If I were to surrender to the void, I would lose this version of myself. The new Sherlock, with his new body, won’t be me at all.”

“But the essence is the same.”

“Not the experience. This me dies. A new me, with new experiences lives. How cruel.”

John pauses, caught off guard by the shimmering shine around the monster’s eyes.

“You… still mourn him.”

The monster jolts upright, as if realizing he’s been slowly eaten alive for months by moths and he never noticed.

“Say what you will about reincarnation, but it’s still death in a way, isn’t it? The other John is gone. I’m what’s left. You’re so desperate to see him in me, to convince yourself that your efforts haven’t been in vain, that you spout this nonsense about living forever with me. But I’m not who you want. I never will be. Sherlock,” John refuses to reach out, “you need to move on.”

“No,” the monster shakes, quivers, “you _are_ who I want, John Watson. I love you,” he grabs John’s shoulders, “ _I love you_.”

“Have you ever asked what I want from this life?” John raises his voice, “Have you ever wondered why I stay? Why I keep indulging your play of make-believe?!”

The monster shakes his head. “You love me, you said so… You told me I’m brilliant…”

 _Is that something the other John told you too? Or was it me? I don’t even remember anymore_.

“I travelled far and wide, beyond my home, when I could have stayed as a healer at my village. I was _looking_ for something, Sherlock. What do you think I was looking for?”

“Purpose,” the monster says fervently, “A war. Danger.”

“No,” John shakes his head, and not for the first time, he feels the urge to embrace this pitiful old man. “A fairy tale. A thread of hope. Anything green.”

The monster’s eyes widen. “John—”

“You bring about dust, you starve the earth. But him?” John tilts his head towards the Sherlock sleeping in a glassful of twisted thorns and leaves, “I think he brings green.”

“No!”

John twists his cane and smashes it against the glass coffin.

*

“I’m going to find it, one day, Granny,” little John tells Rose. “I’m going to find something green that grows in the dust.”

“What a fantasy, how silly,” the grown-ups always say.

But Grandma Rose, she just smiles.

“I believe you,” she presses her last pressed flower against his hand. “You’ll make the world grow.”


End file.
